Golden
by Elodie.Haven
Summary: "She'll remember his hand around hers, the callouses on his fingertips, every last detail, and she'll remember clawing her way back to reality with the help of that hand." Where love conquers all.
1. Prologue: Memory

**Oh, the Fantine/Valjean ship. Yes, I am aware that I am destroying one of the most beautiful platonic relationships in the history of classical literature. Oh well. I couldn't resist.**

**Just in case you're wondering, I more or less base the setting and the characters' appearance on the 2012 movie, so you are welcome to envision Valjean as Hugh Jackman and Fantine as, uh…a blonde Anne Hathaway? Weird thought…**

**Disclaimer: I have absolutely no idea as to who actually owns **_**Les Misérables **_**nowadays, but it sure ain't me. All rights go to Hugo, Schönberg, etc.**

Years later, she will look back at her life and see a series of turning points. The individual moments of agony and joy will have blended together, leaving only an image here and there to be sharp and defined, with razor-like edges still dripping blood.

She'll remember she turned her head and saw her lover, saw his beautiful eyes, molten gold in the lamplight. But she won't recall the words he said to her, what he ever did that made her trust him so completely, so foolishly. She'll remember her stomach heaving, and again, and again, and the ring on the finger of the doctor who told her what she already knew. She'll remember her child's eyes, bluer than the sky. And she'll remember her own voice echoing inside her head, later, her lips forming a soundless chant—_Cosette, for Cosette, you do this for Cosette. _After that, it's all a blur.

But she'll remember his soft brown eyes and their strange glistening quality, the warmth of his coat as he wrapped her in it and carried her away. She'll remember his hand around hers, the callouses on his fingertips, every last detail, and she'll remember clawing her way back to reality with the help of that hand. Reality was a whirlwind of sensations, blood in her mouth, chills wracking her body, her stomach cramping, coughs forcing their way out from her throat, but the quiet pressure of his fingers kept her safe, even inside her frighteningly lucid mind.

She was happy, in some warped way, to hear that he, too, had his secrets. He had seemed too perfect until then. But after his confession, they both came to accept that they were perfect together, the ex-convict and the ex-whore, with all the old demons that haunted them not enough to dispel their harmony. He, tired and conflicted. She, physically wrecked and emotionally shattered. Perfect.

Years later, she will look back and see his smile.

Once he is there to clear her eyes, she starts making real memories. The days that will stay with her forever.

**I don't know where I am going with this, so please let me know if you want me to continue.**

**Also, which would you prefer: an afterlife fic (because we don't have nearly enough of those) or an AU where Fantine survives?**


	2. Chapter 1: Footsteps

**Disclaimer: I don't own this any more than I did when I wrote the last chapter.**

**Thanks for your review, an AU it is…**

He tries very hard not to judge people by their handwriting. But it's an old habit. He's always felt that he can see the arrogance and coldness and ignorance in the neat little lines on the yellow passport he keeps hidden in his mattress.

And he can't help the twist of dislike in his gut that the innkeeper's handwriting engenders.

He has listened to so many of Fantine's stories that he fancies being able to visualize Cosette, a laughing girl with golden hair like her mother's. The doctor's bills are jarring against his half-formed daydreams. He does not want to imagine how gaunt and gray a child would look after months of illnesses.

He is careful to smooth his expression into one of contentment before approaching Fantine.

He visits her that afternoon, just as he does every day. But this is the first time he finds her sitting up in bed, propped against her pillow, something about the way she holds her arms suggesting a strength that did not exist before.

Her blonde hair, glinting gold in the sunlight, is caught back into a braid that just barely brushes her shoulder. She must have cut her hair more than once, he muses. She must not remember the second time. He resists the impulse to tuck a stray strand behind her ear.

"Is she coming?" she asks at once. Is he imagining it, or is her voice stronger, less choked by phlegm?

"Soon," he promises. "You look stronger today, Mademoiselle."

Her smile is the ghost of something beautiful, blackened as it is by her missing teeth. "I feel stronger. You make me feel stronger."

He doesn't quite know what to say to that. Instead he helps her to her feet, those slim appendages sporting the outlines of fragile bones and tapering down to torn nails. He carries her into the patch of sunlight the window casts onto the floor. He helps her to walk, feeling how her ribs jab into the arm he wraps around her torso to support her.

She manages only a few steps before collapsing against him. But it's progress. It's hope. It's a tiny flame of warmth in his long-dead heart.

…

She sleeps so deeply that night that the sisters fear she's fading. But her breathing is steady, unlabored.

She knows he's gone. She knows he'll come back.

…

Valjean, meanwhile, is running.

If Champmathieu had been arrested just a few weeks earlier, he would have been in irons by then. As it is, he is absolutely sure he feel never be bound by those chains again. He has something to live for now; he has never forgotten what it's like to have a family.

He will find Cosette. (This part of his plan is infallible. He has two thousand francs in his pockets, and there are far too many people who can be bought with bits of printed paper.) He will return for Fantine. (He doesn't dwell on the possibility of failure, the possibility of policemen surrounding the hospital.) And then there will be three of them, running.

The sky is blacker than tar by the time he reaches the woods outside Montfermeil. There are no stars, only a child's sweet soprano to guide him.


	3. Chapter 2: Promises

He feels as if he has known the child in the woods for a lifetime, but she is a stranger to him, as he is to her. She stumbles over her own feet in her haste to get away from him. But she is careful to set the bucket down properly first.

He reaches out to her, then pauses. What on earth can he tell her?

He starts by calling out to her, gentle. "Cosette."

She looks up, not used to being referred to by name. "Monsieur?" she whispers, shrinking into herself until he's afraid she'll disappear altogether.

"That's a big burden for a small girl," he says. "May I help you with your bucket, Mademoiselle?"

Her face transforms when she smiles. He sees, for a moment, how beautiful she once was and will be again. They are nearing the inn by the time she slips her tiny, ice-cold hand into his, but when she does, he feels all the emptiness inside him fill up with light.

…

He's shaking with hot anger by the time they leave Montfermeil. But he's got enough sense left not to frighten the child. Her feet are frozen, so he carries her, wrapping his coat around her emaciated form.

He fills the night with golden promises. He tells her of her mother, that martyr who loved her so, and whispers that she will be safe forever now. Cosette relaxes against him, resting her head against his shoulder. He, meanwhile, tenses. He must be imagining the footsteps behind him, the distant sound a horse's hooves. But one can never be too careful.

…

"How is she?" he whispers to the nun standing watch in the front room of the hospital. Cosette slept in his arms even as he ran the last few blocks to Montreil-sur-Mer, no longer able to ignore the grating voices always just a few steps behind him. His voice shouldn't wake her, exhausted as she obviously is, but he whispers nevertheless.

The sister's horrified eyes are fixated on the child. She's a compassionate girl, the nun, and he can see she's itching to fix Cosette a hot meal and a bath.

"Please, Sister, this is Cosette. Feed and bathe her, find her something warm to wear, let her sleep somewhere, in another room. And have someone call for a carriage."

"Are…are you going somewhere, Monsieur?" The nun takes Cosette into her own arms with no effort at all.

"Yes."

…

_They watch her, skinny and spindly and brokenly beautiful as she is. Her blue linen skirts are just another flower among the weeds that reach higher than she does. She laughs openly as she plays among the foliage, but every other minute she glances back to reassure herself that her parents are still there. Fantine tenses a little every time she sees the shadows of bruises along the child's cheekbones, relaxes at the sight of her smile. She has no anger left._

_He starts when she reaches for his hand and wraps her thin fingers around his strong ones. He wants desperately to look at her, but he somehow can't bring himself to. She does the work, instead, turning towards him with a small smile. Somehow, he no longer notices the hollow pockets sunk into her cheeks that give away her lack of teeth. _

_She presses her lips against his for the briefest instant, something between the kiss of a ghost and the kiss of a whore and the kiss of an old friend, but something nonetheless. Cosette watches, and her smile grows._

…

He sits beside Fantine for hours, knowing that time is running short, and yet unable to wake her when peaceful sleep is hard for her to come by. It's nearing morning by the time her eyelids flutter open. He squeezes her hand slightly, reassuring her. She still wakes up screaming sometimes.

"Monsieur," she whispers, hoarse again. Her earlier strength is gone. "Cosette…"

"Is here. Sleeping." How long he has waited to say those words to her!

Her face goes blank, and she gasps quietly. "What? What did you say?"

"Your child is here, Mademoiselle."

Her haggard face changes with her smile just as Cosette's did. They resemble each other, mother and daughter.

"Let me see her!"

"Soon." He bows his head. "There is something I must tell you first."

When he has told her everything, she reaches out with her fragile hand to touch his cheek. Her palm molds to the contours of his face. They sit in silence, connected by something formed by words and transcending words.

Finally, she speaks. "Thank you for telling me that." She smiles again, and he lays his hand over her own where it rests against his face. "We have to leave now, don't we? Go somewhere safe."

He nods, and the gesture turns into him shaking his head halfway through. "There is no such thing as safety for me, Mademoiselle. I will find you and Cosette a home, a school for her and a nurse for you, provide you with as much money as you will need—but I will not endanger you or your child."

He's horrified to see that there are tears trailing down her papery cheeks. She swallows. "I know Cosette would be so happy if you stayed with us."

He can hardly believe what he's hearing. Who would want their beloved daughter around an ex-convict being hunted by one of the district's best policemen? Granted, she isn't the best judge of character, seeing as she left Cosette with those monsters who call themselves innkeepers, but _still_.

"And you, mademoiselle?"

"I would be so happy too."

Without even knowing it, he has decided.


	4. Chapter 3: Lamplight

**Chapter 3: Lamplight**

**I do not own Les Misérables.**

The nun, standing in the front room, holds Cosette's hand in her own with a feather-light touch. Dressed in ill-fitting cast-offs, with too-big hob-nailed boots weighing down her feet and her thin strands of damp hair tucked into a simple cap, the child looks like something from a nightmare. The bruises on her face are even more prominent now that her skin is clean. She will break her mother's heart.

There are no alternatives, though. He kneels down before her, and she shrinks back against the nun's skirts when he reaches for her face, relaxes again when he only touches her cheek so gently that she can't feel any pressure at all.

"It's time for you to see your mother again, Cosette," he tells her. Although he does not know it, Cosette's seeming slowness is caused only by trauma. She's a bright child, gifted, with extraordinary powers of memory.

She remembers her mother.

This time, she shows her teeth when she smiles, and he can see that, dirty as they are, none are missing. He latches onto this small detail, takes it as reassurance that all the damage that has been done to her is reversible.

Holding Cosette in his arms again, he stops in the shadows of the doorway, watching Fantine sitting up under the exposed beams of the ceiling, humming tunelessly to herself in anticipation.

_It has to be done. _

"Cosette…" He wants to warn her, suddenly, to tell her to say that the bruises are from a bad fall, the thinness is from the imaginary illnesses. Fantine must not know that everything she sacrificed was sacrificed in vain.

But it's too late. The child has clambered from his arms and flown into her mother's. They shouldn't be able to remember each other. Fantine left a girl barely old enough to be called a toddler; Cosette—if she remembers her mother at all—knows only a young and pretty woman.

But they know each other at once. And although Cosette is a little stiff in the arms of an almost-stranger, Fantine does not hold back.

He watches from the shadows as they sob in each other's arms, and knows that he will never leave them.

…

"If anyone asks, you have not been here since yesterday and the mademoiselle passed away at night." The nun is pale in the dim light of the moon, shining through the half-uncovered windows, but her jaw is set. He's touched by her willingness to flout her vow of honesty.

"Thank you."

She hands him a flask of hot tea, a bundle of food, and a woman's coat with a tight nod.

…

They ride in a carriage lined in blood-red leather. Valjean peers through the gap between the velvet curtains, fixing his eyes on the pools of lamplight cast onto the street. Fantine clutches her daughter to her with inhuman strength and demands answers as she strokes Cosette's ravaged face. Valjean sees no option but honesty. The answer is written in the bruises scattered across the girl's body, after all.

How they have suffered, mother and daughter, he thinks. It aches more acutely than the scars on his own body.

Fantine falls asleep several miles away from the safe house in Paris he invested in many years ago. It's a simple attic room, but he knows already that it will be a haven of light for the three of them. He fingers the bank notes he has had sewn into the lining of his coat as a precaution.

He does not foresee the toll the journey will take on Fantine.

…

For three days, she hovers between life and death.

Cosette sits beside her mother, silent and ghostly, with both her bony arms curled around her doll. Valjean keeps her on his lap, letting her slight weight keep him anchored to reality. They listen to the labored and profound sound of Fantine's breathing.

He wonders whether he ought to go for a doctor. But she's past the point where medicine could help her. And he's afraid to leave her for that long; even his rushed trips to the baker's seem to take lifetimes. Each moment could be her last.

She doesn't have the energy for words, but on the third night she speaks anyway. "Cosette…"

The child, asleep with her head against his shoulder, stirs instinctively.

"She's here, mademoiselle. Sleeping."

"Promise me…you'll care for her." Her lips are as white as her skin. Her eyelashes flutter against her cheekbones, feeble.

"I'll love her as my own daughter," he vows.

"Then it's time for me to sleep," she whispers.

Perhaps it's for the best. Perhaps this would be the kindest way, for her short and sorrowful life to end now, instead of existing in prolonged agony. But he feels the brush of Cosette's hair against his neck and sees the silver glint of Fantine's skin in the lamplight, and he finds himself utterly unable to let her go.

He sets Cosette down on her mattress in the corner before going to sit by Fantine once again. Driven by some unnamed instinct, he bends over her skeletal form and presses his lips awkwardly against her icy ones.

Her eyes fly open. Her fingers grasp his wrist with shocking strength.

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	5. Chapter 4: Specters

**Chapter 4: Specters**

**I do not own Les Misérables.**

**Yes, I know I played around a little with the lyrics to Lovely Ladies. When I first heard the song I understood "Don't it make a change to have a girl who can't refuse" as "No need to make a change to have a girl who can't refuse", and the latter has always made more sense to me, so that's what I'm using here.**

_The cold burns like fire. _

_Her fingers are claws, clutching a few blood-red rags of cheap chiffon around her crouched and emaciated figure. Her bare feet are so dirty they could be any color, but she knows they're as blue as the rest of her skin. They leave a trail of blood behind her, marking the spot at the edge of the docks were she stood for hours, staring at the black horizon, barely illuminated by moonlight, both dreading and hoping for a customer. There's another trail of blood down her leg._

_She would be hungry if she weren't so numb._

_Her hand grasps instinctively at her collarbone, red with scars and purple with bruises, searching for the locket and little gold cross that used to hang there. She's sold them both long ago, of course, and maybe it's best. She doesn't feel worthy of them anymore._

_She finds herself on the ground, curling in on herself and leaning against an abandoned crate or two, fighting for consciousness when a part of her has given up dreaming about anything but sleep, eternal, peaceful, impossible. _

_She can almost feel the ghostly hand of a child on her shoulder, an angel keeping her anchored to hell._

_There's a man, now, extending a hand filthy with sores, fingernails torn. She catches a sight of the glint of copper, matching the taste of bitterness in her mouth._

"_Come on, captain," she whispers. "You can wear your shoes. No need to make a change to have a girl who can't refuse."_

_He is oblivious to her harsh mockery._

_The damp cobblestones bruise her head and back. She breathes in and out deeply, focusing on the stench of rotten fish and open sores and rampant disease. _

_Cosette._

_She grits her teeth at the first slash of pain._

_Cosette._

_A single tear trails down into her shorn hair. _

_Cosette._

_The cold burns like fire._

…

She is awakened by the sound of her own scream.

…

_He is running, always running. Men with carved stone faces watch him, judge him, condemn him. Children throw stones. He feels the weight of iron around his neck, runs his fingers along the hideous scabs on his wrists. Blood drips from the slices on his back—remnants from countless lashings._

_He is running, always running, but at some point, he realizes that there are chains everywhere, encasing him, and he's running only against the bars of his cells while the guards watch and laugh. He is running, always running, and never reaching anything._

_His little nephew watches with sunken, haunted eyes._

…

He stares at the ceiling when he wakes, hearing his own harsh breathing and feeling the tears soak his shirt.

When Fantine cries out, he jumps to his feet without thinking and rushes into her room. He holds her for a long time, while her sobs subside into whimpers.

At some point, the door slams open and a little figure in white flies in. Cosette curls up against her mother, her mere presence soothing the deranged woman.

The presence of their respective nightmares is almost tangible in the air.

The sun rises on their three intertwined figures.

…

He will always feel guilty for the night he made them spend on the streets.

They had no choice but to run when Javert started sniffing around. He carried Fantine through the streets once her legs gave way, but she was strong enough by that time to survive the journey and even to walk some of the way herself.

They escaped the police, but they found themselves alone and lost in Paris. It took a few days to find the house on Rue Plumet, but they all basked in a feeling of homecoming once they had.

He's working as a gardener at the Luxembourg now. Cosette, who in her childhood resiliency has made a remarkably full recovery and is now well on her way to being rosy and lovely, attends school. And Fantine, fragile as a spun-glass sculpture, takes in the occasional piece of sewing.

Their household is filled with light. But shadows are persistent. All three wake up screaming every once in a while.

…

_Each new turn in the darkness hides another specter. Each new snowflake is another knife._

_She's dragging a full and heavy bucket behind her once the solid figure appears, undeniably real. Her heart soars, sure it recognizes her rescuer. And then her eyes narrow. The figure is familiar—Madam's silhouette, but blurred, with warped edges._

_The figure steps forward. Her breathing goes ragged._

_Each footfall strikes more terror into her frozen heart._

…

Cosette presses her lips tightly together and shrinks further into her father's arms.

…

They don't speak of it come morning.

Fantine slices homemade bread, fresh yesterday, and hums as she braids Cosette's hair. Valjean drinks coffee.

His unusual work hours are tailored to fit the nightmares. He never leaves until late morning, when he can be sure that Fantine is calm.

They watch Cosette, dressed in pretty maroon wool, dance down the lane. Their smiles are identical.

They don't speak of their connection. But it's there. It grows stronger daily. It won't be long now before one of them is driven to making a move.

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	6. Chapter 5: Midnight

**Midnight **

He comes home weary and tangled in memories. He no longer find peace in solitude; the trees and grasses he loved as mayor now whisper only of the family he failed.

He's tried so hard, so fruitlessly, to find them.

But the joy of reaching their little cottage on Rue Plumet never fades. Cosette flies out to meet him and he sweeps her into his arms. The high-pitched pealing of her laughter echoes down the street. She wraps her arms around his neck and something inside him twists at the simple love and trust clear in the gesture. Childhood is extraordinary. She could teach him a thing or two about leaving the demons of the past in the past.

Even the most stubborn of her bruises and scars have faded enough now for him to count the freckles splattered across her nose.

"Good evening, _mon ange." _He tweaks her nose.

She giggles. "Maman wants to talk to you," she informs him, calm and matter-of-fact.

"Is that so?" He starts worrying at once.

"She said not to worry."

Of course she did.

But then Fantine steps through the doorway, and he forgets everything. She's milk white in the light of the setting sun, but her defined cheekbones and shadowed eyes only highlight an otherworldly beauty about her. She wipes her hands on her apron and brushes the flour from her clothes. Beautiful.

"You've been working too hard," he chides gently, shifting Cosette so that she rests securely in the crook of his arm and he can take Fantine's hands in his. There are blisters on her fingers from the needle; her eyes are sore and her hands stiff, he knows. On an impulse, he brings her fingers to his lips and kisses her knuckles. "Ma bichette." It's his special name for her.

"Welcome home." She's blushing faintly—or is he imagining it?—as she steps back and beckons him inside.

…

They gather around the fire in the sitting room after dinner. He rubs his scarred wrists, absently, and stares into the flames as Fantine cradles her daughter in her arms and sings her to sleep. Cosette, at seven, is too old for such things, but Fantine is determined to make up for the years they both lost.

Eventually, Cosette yawns and closes her eyes. Fantine's voice fades away as she, too, falls asleep.

…

_He's drunk the first time he enters her. She struggles not to cry out at the first slice of pain. But his eyes are everywhere, glistening and molten, and they're soaking her and coating her and she's beautiful, she's golden._

_He's full of light and life and vigor. He kisses her forehead every morning and rubs his thumb across the back of her hand and smiles at her. He reads to her and explains the words. He gives her a tiny gold crucifix and she thinks, my savior._

_Later, she will look back and see the harsh, mocking edge to his laughter and the door he slammed behind him and the wet cobblestones she traversed on her way to Montreil-sur-Mer and she will hate him. She will hate him. And her hate will blacken her. _

_There's little room left in her heart for love._

…

He's taken Cosette into the bedroom they furnished and decorated for her, and he's back in the sitting room, listening to the steadiness of Fantine's breathing and resisting the urge to take her into his arms. It's normally Cosette who staves off her nightmares, but he wishes that it were he.

Fantine whimpers in her sleep, such a meek and plaintive sound, and he can't stand it. He wakes her with a gentle hand to her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," she cries, still half-asleep. "I'm so sorry."

She frightens him in her brokenness. "It's alright. I'm here. It's alright."

And somehow, it is.

He will never be sure what he says to her. He will never be sure how she responds. He will never be sure who initiates their kiss. And he will never forget the feeling of simultaneously falling and soaring, or the sensation of her lips moving in broken patterns against his. She tastes like sugar and uncertainty.

He leans back on the sofa and settles her against his chest. He knows her weight will keep away the specters tonight. He's not used to touching her, not like this. A strange combination of intimacy and modesty exists between them, for he was the one to care for her in the latter half of her convalescence—to wash her and feed her and bind the wounds on her body that refused for so long to heal—when there were no longer nuns to do a woman's work, and yet there has always been such distance between them.

"What was it you wanted to tell me?" He has suddenly remembered Cosette's words.

"I think you got the message, Jean." Neither one of them can pinpoint the moment she stopped with the formal _Monsieur _and started calling him by his first name. It was probably around the time he dropped _Mademoiselle _in favor of his chosen term of endearment.

Another kiss, hesitant, gentle, awkward, perfect.

He basks in the warmth of their togetherness. And although he fell for her much harder and much faster than she fell for him, she's she one to whisper _I love you_ in his ear.

In answer, he presses his hand to her chest and feels the thrumming of her heartbeat.

_I love you._

She smiles, made glorious by his words.

He wonders what she'll look like in wedding white.

She wonders if she's dreaming.

…

Their wedding takes place with hitched breathing and false names and pounding hearts. He holds his wife for a long time afterwards, reassuring himself that she's there, body and soul, instead of wandering the docks again like she does every night.

Their daughter is an angel in her white lace dress. The magistrate is enchanted. He doesn't even question Jean's obviously forged papers.

Jean touches the flowers Cosette pinned into Fantine's hair.


	7. Chapter 6: Angels

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can;

And common sufferings

Are far stronger links than common joys.

-Alphonse de Lamartine

Death is a challenge.

It tells us not to waste time...it tells us to

Tell each other right now that we love each other.

-Leo Buscaglia

Cosette curls up on her side, almost lost in her huge four-poster bed. Often she sleeps with mother in an attempt to keep the nightmares away from them both, but they've asked her to stay in her own room for their wedding night.

Once her forehead has been kissed by both of her parents, Cosette closes her eyes. Fantine blows out the lamp before taking Jean's hand and leading him to her prettily furnished room. They pass the unobtrusive door to his little chamber and he glances at it nervously. She squeezes his hand.

Something akin to stage fright twists in his gut as they stand in their stocking-feet behind the closed bedroom door.

"I…Fantine…you don't have to do this," he says quietly. He's trying very hard not to imagine her blood and tears on the skin of a nameless man.

She glances up, and he sees at once that she's hurt. "Of course, I would understand if you didn't want to touch a whore," she responds, calm.

An instant later, she's wrapped in his arms with her head resting against his shoulder. "That's not what I _meant. _I just don't want to hurt you..."

She just sighs and shakes her head. "You won't."

"…And I have no idea how to do this. I've never…_known_ a woman before."

A small smile tugs at her lips. "Truly?"

He doesn't understand why this seems to amuse her so. "Truly."

"Never mind. I know more than enough."

His hand trembles slightly as she places it onto her shoulder so that it brushes against the base of her neck. Her skin, softer and more breakable than the most delicate of silk lengths, seems to emanate an electric hum.

And she's certain, deep inside her bones and narrow, that this time will be different.

But it's not enough. Her body, scarred as it is, may be certain, but her heart is still lost in pain and rage.

She finds her own haunted eyes in a mirror hanging on the wall, and bursts into tears.

…

She wakes up to find herself fully dressed, but wrapped up so tightly in her husband's arms that it probably should be uncomfortable but isn't.

His eyes are open. He smiles at her, and presses a chaste kiss to her forehead.

…

They fall into a pattern. Every night, she will persuade him to try. She will take his hands and place them on her body, where they will burn her skin like open flames. And invariably, she will end up sobbing against his shoulder.

He is endlessly patient. And she is utterly lost.

…

The afternoon that will mark a turning point happens to be the afternoon she stops counting the days of their married life. Physically, he maintains a certain distance from her, but emotionally they are twined together, and neither of them has ever been happier.

Neither of them has nightmares anymore. Often they let Cosette sleep between them, and then their house will be free of dreams altogether.

She stands in the kitchen that day, peeling apples and awaiting Cosette's return from school. By some coincidence—perhaps, she will later muse, it is fate—the Luxembourg is closed for the week for renovations, and Jean sits at the kitchen table with a newspaper in his hands and a mug of black coffee growing cold in front of him.

An involuntary smile spreads across her face as she sees her daughter tripping up the street with her plaited hair coming free from its ribbons and her notebooks tucked under her arm. And then her hands, reaching for another apple, still. She watches Cosette stumble and fall, and waits for her daughter to climb back to her feet. Cosette doesn't.

She panics at once. Her daughter is still fragile. She catches every possible illness and spends days bedridden; a cruel comment from another child leaves her in tears for hours. A small, broken gasp tears its way through her lips.

He looks up at once and sees the fallen figure outside. She watches, still frozen at the window, as he runs to Cosette and lifts her into his strong arms. The child cradles her sprained wrist against her chest, but her tears stop at once as soon as he whispers a soothing word or two to her.

Watching him hold her child, she realizes, all at once, how deep her love and, more importantly, her trust run. Something inside her breaks, and something else heals.

Neither of them will ever forget the following night. She will wake up the next morning with her lips swollen from his kisses.

…

_Nine years later…_

Her hair has gone white, and the only thing between her and utter blindness is a pair of spectacles with ridiculously thick lenses. She is more beautiful in his eyes, however, than she was in anyone else's in her prime.

He comes home one March afternoon from a trip to town with a birthday gift for Cosette in his pocket and something even more precious cradled in his hand.

"Fantine," he calls. She looks up from her needlework at the barely disguised wonder in his voice. "I found something in town today."

Cosette, upstairs in her room, almost drops her book at the sound of her mother's cry. Panicked, the golden-haired girl trips several times on her hasty way to the kitchen.

She finds her mother with her slim hands clapped to her mouth and tears trailing silently down her cheeks.

Her father is extending a hand towards his wife. Clasped between his fingers is a tarnished gold locket.

…

Now that Jean is retired, their little family often takes long walks in the garden he used to work at. And although her husband is utterly oblivious to the young man obviously infatuated with their daughter—or perhaps he's just resigned himself to people staring openly at their young beauty—she is not.

She smiles at the sight of her daughter so obviously and so ecstatically in love. Her twinges of worry are easily suppressed. She's so proud of how reasonable Cosette has grown up to be. Not like her. Never like her.

She watches from the window as her little girl grasps the hand of her Marius through the gate shadowed by roses.

…

She's the one to send her husband to the barricades, and she will never be able to sort out her tangled feelings of agony and guilt afterwards enough to decide whether or not she regrets this decision.

She comes home from the market that day, thinking only of her daughter's happiness, and spills forth the entire story of Cosette and Marius and the revolution and the demise that approaches those lively and passionate young men with utter certainty. She watches him go and thinks _what have I done?_

She doesn't realize that Cosette followed her beloved and her father until she opens her daughter's bedroom door and finds the chamber deserted.

She loses consciousness. Later, she will hate herself for this weakness, for not waking until an exhausted and filthy and tear-soaked Cosette slams her weary fists against the door that evening and drags Marius' bloody and unconscious form inside.

…

She will wear mourning black at her daughter's wedding.

She will stand in front of the mass grave where those foolish revolutionaries of the June Rebellion supposedly lie buried. She will press her fingernails into her locket she carries in her dress pocket. She will throw her head back and scream her anguish to the unresponsive and unreachable skies.

_Take my hand _

_And lead me to salvation_

_Take my love_

_For love is everlasting_

_And remember_

_The truth that once was spoken_

_To love another person is to see the face of God._

**So this fic turned out shorter than originally planned, but here it is in its entirety. Unless my sparse but awesome reviewers should request an epilogue (which would take place in the afterlife), in which case I would be happy to oblige.**

**Hope you enjoyed reading it! Reviews are welcome!**


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